OKX Announces Closure of Bitcoin Mining Pool and Related Services

OKX, one of the prominent cryptocurrency exchanges in the crypto market, has officially announced the cessation of its Bitcoin mining pool and the closure of coin mining services on the OKX Mining Pool platform on February 26, 2024. The reason provided by OKX is to “adjust business operations,” with no further explanation.

The exchange will halt the registration feature for new users to join the OKX Mining Pool from January 26, 2024. Existing customers utilizing the current services will still have access until February 25, 2024, before a complete shutdown on the following day.

A Mining Pool, also known as a “mining guild,” enhances the efficiency of processing blockchain blocks by consolidating computing power from multiple miners. This collaborative effort allows miners to solve algorithms faster and more efficiently, increasing the chances of successfully mining blocks and ensuring more stable income.

OKX’s Mining Pool, nearly six years old, was previously a top choice for miners in mining various Proof of Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, ETC, LTC, DASH, DCR, BTG, as well as providing services for some Proof of Stake (PoS) assets.

However, in recent years, many of the mentioned cryptocurrencies have gradually lost support from the exchange. Currently, OKX Mining Pool retains only BTC, ETC, and LTC, with only 17 miners using the service. The BTC Pool has a total hashrate of 529.11 EH/s, 883.97 TH/s for LTC, and 162.17 TH/s for ETC.

OKX’s decision comes at a crucial time as major mining entities like Marathon Digital, Phoenix Group, Northern Data Group are gearing up for the upcoming Bitcoin Halving event in April 2024. This significant event involves a 50% reduction in miner block rewards to mitigate Bitcoin’s future inflation rate, making BTC scarcer and more valuable.

Related: OKX Announces Compensation for Users Amid 50% Downtime Incident

OKX’s Bitcoin mining pool ranking

Data from MiningPoolStats also indicates that OKX’s Bitcoin mining pool is currently ranked 25th in terms of the number of participating miners, significantly lagging behind the competitor Binance, which boasts a figure of 412,771 miners utilizing their services.

OKX’s Bitcoin mining pool is positioned at 25th place in terms of the number of participating miners, far behind the rival Binance, which has 412,771 miners using its services. Source: MiningPoolStats